Why did I start a record label? I fell into it because the music I loved was around me and I wanted to release music that I liked. Actually, this first release was a bitter sweet affair I had with The Stems between 1987 and 1990. I was The Stems stage manager basically from when the band started in 1983 until they split in 1987, well almost as I quit before their last Australian tour of ’87. As I was a professional photographer at the time, I put that career on hold and ended up touring with the band and therefore took more photographs of them than anybody else did. Of course I never got paid for any of my work and I actually didn’t mind because they where my friends and I was a big part of their lives. Besides that, I was documenting a period of rock history. After falling out with the band before their last tour, I pack up house and moved to the other side of the country and settled in Sydney. I got back into my photography for awhile but ended up setting up a record mail order biz instead, I also worked for Phantom Records for a year or so. Anyway, one day a friend of mine, Jorge showed me a fan club magazine that was put togther about another band called The Scientists. I was kinda impressed and I thought about doing one about The Stems, after all, I did have tons of photographs that no one had ever seen.
After looking through rolls and rolls of film and contact sheets, I decided that it was a great idea to put all these images into a book and sell it, seeing as the photographs owed me a lot of money. I spent months putting this thing together onto paste up boards because this was before computers and photoshop was afordable. I gathered everything I had on the band including flyers, news articles ~ EVERYTHING. Once I got it started, it turned into a monster and what I had was just not enough to satisfy me. Then one day I decided to include interviews with all band members to tell the story in their own words, so I promptly contacted each memeber and told them about the book. At first, I was met with eyes wide open then that turned into bitterness from some members. As I was living in Sydney and everyone else was still living in Perth, I sent everyone a list of questions and a blank cassette tape so they could just use a recorder to answer from my list. I waited and I waited and I waited but no reply, eventually calling them back on the phone. I called Dom Mariani first and he told me that he was running behind and would get it done soon. Richard Lane was coming to Sydney for a short trip and he said he would sit down with me and do it, which he did. After a couple more months of waiting for mail from Dom, I decided to give him a quick call about it. He promptly told me that he wasn’t interested and was dissapointed that I had asked Richard to do it first (I actually rang Dom first and then Richard on the same day) and basically said he would never talk to me again if I released the book. Dom and Richard where not talking at that time and I guess Dom was still bitter about the split and washed his hands of the whole thing. Well I was pretty pissed off with him because he had me waiting and the layout was all done except for the interviews in place, I wasn’t about to put this book on the shelf after all the hard work I had put into it.
Atfer some months of finishing the layout I was having some trouble trying to come up with a title for it, so I went into my box of live tapes I had of the Stems in search of a title. I found a demo tape which had the first ever recordings the Stems had made which included one of my fave live songs “Let Your Head Rest” and I thought that WAS it. It was perfect, basically meaning both the beginning and end of the band. After finally finding a title I then had to choose a front cover photograph, and yes I could have used a pic of the band but I decided on using something a little stonger. The photograph on the front cover was done in the hallway of a house I was living in at the time. The guitar was actually Dom’s, it was one of his that he smashed on stage during an encore at a wild gig in Perth. I took it home and stashed it under my bed for a year or so and then pulled it out sometime in 1986 to take photo’s of it. So there you have it, Dom’s smashed guitar on a book titled “Let Your Head Rest” about the band he formed and was so bitter about ~ Perfect.
As I was finishing up with the book, I was playing a lot of those Stems tapes and I got thinking. Why not put music inside this book and make it a little more special for the purchaser ~ Great idea. I decided on using the title song because it was an early demo and the fact that it had been shevled and no one outside of Perth would have heard that song, it was deleted from their live shows very early on in 1985. I also added two demo versions of songs on the b-side for a bonus treat. I think putting a record with this book probably pissed off Dom even more and stories quickly went around calling it a bootleg, but it wasn’t. I contacted their record label and asked for the rights to release it and they gave me permission and sent an invoice with royalties to be paid. I paid them and set about releasing my first record on my very own record label ~ WOW. Let me tell you, there’s a weird buzz you get when you have your first release in your hand, I held that thing for hours like a proud father – it’s weird.
Oh yea, why did I choose Zero Hour as a record label name? Quite simply, It’s the title of one of my favourite bands songs “The Plimsouls” and also The Stems played it as well.
There you have it, the short story on how Zero Hour records was born. I have listed “Let You Head Rest” below for your listening pleasure.
City: Perth
Year: 1990
Label: Zero Hour
Format: Book+7″ 2000 pressed
Song: Let Your Head Rest
Zero Hour Records Australia 